The son of film theoretician Raymond Spottiswoode, British-born Roger Spottiswoode served as an editing trainee on "Georgy Girl" (1996), then worked as an editor of documentaries and TV commercials prior to cutting three Sam Peckinpah films, "Straw Dogs" (1971), The Getaway" (1972) and "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid" (1973). He also edited Karel Reisz's "The Gambler" (1974) and Walter Hill's "Hard Times" (1975) and would reteam with each again, associate producing Reisz's "Who'll Stop the Rain" (1977) and co-scripting (with Hill and Larry Gross) Hill's blockbuster Eddie Murphy-Nick Nolte hit "48 Hrs." (1982).
Spottiswoode made his directorial debut with "Terror Train" in 1980, and for his second effort, "The Pursuit of D B Cooper" (1981), began an association with screenwriter Ron Shelton that would span three films, including the taut political drama "Under Fire" (1983). He developed into an adaptable, competent Hollywood director of mainstream films such as "Shoot to Kill" (1988) "Turner and Hooch" (1989) and "Air America" (1990) and also helmed his share of TV-movies, perhaps most notably the Emmy-winning "And the Band Played On" (HBO, 1993), based on Randy Shilts' bestseller about the early years of the AIDS epidemic.
Along with Koreyoshi Kurahara, Spottiswoode directed the ambitious docudrama miniseries "Hiroshima" (1995) for Showtime, combining recently uncovered footage, newsreels, armed forces clips and dramatized encounters with the leading figures of the time to give a mesmerizing account of the events leading up to the dropping of the atomic bomb. Told from both sides, this Canadian-Japanese venture was actually two separate, interwoven films, with Kurahara handling the Japanese point of view (in Japanese with subtitles) and Spottiswoode taking the Allied part. 1997 then saw him at the helm of "Tomorrow Never Dies", another installment of the popular James Bond series.